Miracleman: The Golden Age

Before he wrote Watchmen, Alan Moore picked up an obscure 1950s superhero and rewrote him as one of the greatest tragic heroes anywhere in comics. Miracleman — originally called Marvelman— is a middle-aged journalist named Mike Moran who is in the process of gradually remembering that he was once, and still can be, a superhero. As he rediscovers his powers, and figures out what happened to his memory, he reinvents every tired cliché of the Superman-style hero into something strange and new and somehow deeply sad.

In 1990 Moore handed Miracleman over to Neil Gaiman (yes, that Neil Gaiman — seriously, it’s like watching Bach and Mozart improvise a fugue together) whose run on the title is as strange and astonishing as Moore’s in a totally different way. It’s infuriatingly difficult to find Miracleman today, because the rights to the character are part of a long and bitter legal dispute. But if you find him, read him.